Category: 100 for 100 Organizations

Live Healthy Kids is a hand-on, multi-sensory learning experience taught for 22 weeks in all second-grade classrooms in Athens County, reaching over 550 children annually. The goals of the program are to familiarize students with new foods, improve the students’ ability and willingness to make healthy choices, and encourage students to increase daily physical activity. Each LHK lesson has a hands-on component where students practice cooking skills and prepare a healthy meal, which they sample together. Students learn how to chop, mix, measure, and more. Our evaluations show that because students are engaged with a hands-on opportunity to prepare food, they are more likely to sample the food. In the first semester, students learn about basic nutrition like vitamins, whole foods, and MyPlate. In the second semester, students take a trip around the world with lessons about food from other cultures like Lebanon, Japan, Italy, and Brazil. Each lesson exposes the students to healthy, whole foods like asparagus, bulgur wheat, mushrooms, red lentils, and black beans.

Mission

Live Healthy Appalachia’s mission is to promote healthy eating and active living through educational opportunities and community partnerships.

What you can do

Live Healthy Appalachia is always seeking volunteers to help in Live Healthy Kids classes. Contributions to LHA can be sent specifically to Live Healthy Kids as well.

100 for 100 Campaign

For almost twenty years, Stuart’s has been a community center for the arts. On average, Stuart’s provides 24,000 visitors with over 75 events a year, including music concerts, theater performances, film festivals, free outdoor summer concerts, educational events, a four day music festival, and private rentals. Our art programming and educational outreach keep us heavily involved with the underserved population of Nelsonville and surrounding communities through cooperative participation in and preservation of the arts. Stuart’s is guided by an all-volunteer Board of Directors that is comprised of active citizens of Nelsonville and surrounding communities.

Our Arts Education Program furthers our mission by providing much needed art education and inspiration to the under-served our region. Each facet of the program has its own program description which fulfills our program goal to offer an affordable, broad-based program focused on the performing arts. The special events, afterschool, day-time classes, and summer programs allow for Arts Education that reaches Southeast Ohio residents of all ages and backgrounds. The overarching outcome of our program is diverse participation where community identity can be freely and openly expressed. Our program is designed to be flexible and responsive to community need.

Under the branch of Stuart’s Art Education Program we offer: theater performances for primary students; an afterschool music program; a visiting artist and artist-in-residence program; an Artists in Residency training program; a drama club and production for Nelsonville-York High School; a creative writing program for adults; regional coordination for the national Poetry Out Loud competition; private music lessons for children ages 6-18; an Appalachian Music Program in partnership with Athens County Public Libraries; and free admission to all children under 12 to our Nelsonville Music Festival.

An average of 7,000 students participate yearly in our Arts Education Program. We are even more excited to increase this once renovations are complete on our Education and Community Center in mid-2017. Stuart’s Art Education Program helps to further our mission and provide much needed education and inspiration to the underserved youth and adults of the region.

Mission

Stuart’s Opera House is the cornerstone of the historic Public Square in Nelsonville, Ohio. It is dedicated to its role as a regional leader in the arts community, a center for public expression, and an economic development partner for Southeastern Ohio.

What you can do

Each facet of Stuart’s Arts Education program has it’s own sequentiality, which fulfill our program goal. Our responsive program is informed by Arts & America: Arts, Health, & Wellness by Judy Rollins, in which she states, “The nature of the arts, with its focus on personal choice and self-expression, renders it a perfect tool for assuring person-centered care and care for the whole person.”

Curriculum is developed by recognized leaders in their artistic fields than yearly reviewed by Arts Education director, instructors, and members of the Arts Ed Committee which is made up of teachers, school board members, education administrators, and community members.

Our program is funded through a mix of fundraisers, grant organizations, and individual donations. To help increase access, our programs are provided for free. We are ready to accept donations and support and can tailor your gift to any facet of our program.

100 for 100 Campaign

The Athens County Public Libraries have a long-standing and robust tradition of providing free and welcoming literacy and enrichment opportunities to families and youth. At our seven county locations and through visits to schools, childcare centers, and community events, youth are empowered and encouraged to grow into strong, creative, and responsible members of the community. Giving youth the freedom to explore the world of ideas, to experience the joy of art and literature, to learn, and to share themselves are values the library holds dear.

The Athens County Public Libraries celebrate children from infancy through early adulthood by providing print and digital resources, gathering places, warm relationships, and a huge number of enriching programs. Nearly 4,500 youth participated in our “Summer at the Library” programs last year alone.

What you can do

The libraries are always on the look out for building stronger community partnerships, particularly working together to bring opportunities and resources beyond Athens city and into the county.

100 for 100 Campaign

OVST Youth Camp, the primary youth outreach program of OVST, entering its second decade, will continue to provide relevant, full-educational, live performance experiences to regional youth, especially those without access to performing arts experiences in their home or school life.

Development Program/Initiative Summary

Ohio Valley Summer Theater (OVST) was founded in 1951 and is Ohio’s longest-running community summer theater. For over six decades, regional families have comprised OVST’s casts, crews and patron base, including the children and grandchildren of our original founders. As OVST entered its sixth decade, the Board made a conscious effort to advance various opportunities for community members of all ages to participate in camps, workshops, and annual main stage performances. OVST remains dedicated and responsive to finding ways to include area youth in the arts and has focused on the development of programs to encourage familial relationships and create additional opportunities for youth to learn and appreciate a variety of performing arts skills.

Ohio Valley Summer Theater’s keystone youth engagement activity, the ten-year-old Youth Camp, which engages approximately 45 elementary, middle and high school students each summer. Youth Camp is a three-week immersive theater experience divided into two camps: 1) morning camp for elementary age, and 2) afternoon camp for teen students. Each camp culminates in a free, public performance for all campers, crew, lighting and sound technicians. Youth Camp participants are drawn from all area schools, the local homeschool community, out-of-town visitors, and exchange students. No previous experience is necessary to attend Youth Camp and repeat participants often advance into assistant and mentorship roles with younger and first-time campers. A unique offering at OVST’s Youth Camp is the availability of a technical theater track for students interested in all that encompasses what goes into making a staged production.

OVST Youth Camp focuses on a different theme each year. OVST’s 2017 camp celebrated the theme, “We Love to Laugh.” Instruction focused on various facets of comedy including clowning, improvisation, and sketch. Visiting professionals working in the comedy performance field, each from Southeast Ohio, provided workshops for Youth Camp 2017. These workshops re-engaged the professional artists with regional youth, trained campers, offered insight into a vibrant career choice, and offered synergies among local artists. Indeed, this highlights a central tenet of the OVST mission: to deliver high quality and diverse theatrical experiences!

What you can do

Today, in a competitive environment where increasing digital entertainment and engagement in cell and other digital devices entices youth away from interpersonal engagement and from out-of-house experiences, OVST’s Youth Camp seeks to diversify and strengthen its programming with higher-caliber exposure to the performing arts, especially from visiting professionals who were born and raised locally. OVST Youth Camp benefited materially in 2017 from a $1,500 Athens Foundation grant supporting professional artists originally from the SE Ohio region, returning with age-appropriate workshops for the Camp. OVST Youth Camp seeks similar ongoing support that brings performance professionals back to teach, enabling not only expanded career choices but overall encouragement of self-awareness and collaborative creativity inherent in the performing arts.

100 for 100 Campaign

Community Food Initiatives celebrates School Gardens as an investment in sustaining and growing the harvest in Southeastern Ohio. School Gardening activities enable students to learn about gardening, the environment, food, and nutrition. Gardening students develop practical life skills and engage in physical activity. Outdoor learning labs and school gardens offer a unique, multi-sensory, inquiry-based education. Most important, the creative and often playful approach of school gardening instills confidence and enthusiasm for life-long learning. The CFI School Garden Program provides the following services:

Professional Development & Technical Support: CFI offers workshops tailored specifically to teachers utilizing school gardens. The School Garden Coordinator regularly consults with teachers seeking advice on best practices for garden planning including season extension and planting strategies.

Garden Assessment & Material Support: CFI can provide school gardens with seeds and plant starts. Shared tools are available for specific project needs. We can link you to sources for other material needs such as mulch, compost, and lumber for raised beds.

Direct Service Teaching: The CFI School Garden Coordinator directly engages with students and can provide teachers with curriculum activities.

Funding Support: CFI can help schools find and identify funding opportunities for school gardens and provide assistance in grant writing.

Our Mission

The mission of Community Food Initiatives is to foster communities where everyone has equal access to fresh, local food.

What you can do

Your donation would assist Community Food Initiatives in continuing this crucial educational project. In addition to garden upkeep and installation, funding will support for the following operative tasks: conducting workshops on planting strategies with our School Garden Coordinator; purchasing plant starts and seeds; purchasing mulch, tools, and other equipment required for plot assembly; developing and teaching curriculum pertaining to maintaining gardens to teachers and parents; providing consultation services to schools that wish to appeal the government for grants and additional support.